Customer Reviews

The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2010: The Key Classical Recordings on CD, DVD and SACD

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It's hard to argue a product with 200 fewer pages than its last edition is improved but I am setting out to show why the Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2010 is better than its last full edition in 2008 and why it should be your preferred book to have among the two available that pretend to give you an annual survey of what's good to buy in recorded classical music.

For anyone new to this publication, The Penguin Guide owes its roots to a 1960 publication called the Stereo Record Guide. From there, the three principal authors, Robert Layton, Ivan March and Edward Greenfield, began publishing the Penguin Guide in 1975 with 1,114 pages of reviews. The three continued this process every few years until the past decade or so, when they began to update the book annually. The odd-numbered year books were called yearbooks and they frankly weren't of much use to anyone. Every even-numbered year -- and again in 2010 -- the whole thing is published anew.

Why do I think the book is better in 2010? Even though it cut its pages by more than 200 -- from almost 1,400 to just over 1,100 -- it also cut out the portions of the book that added little value. This includes long discussions on the why, where, how and wherefore of the book, its discussion of its author change (there is now a fourth author, Paul Czajkowski), a lengthy chat on downloading, and the entire section on collections. Instead, the book has only about one-half inch of pages (they don't number them) that precede the review section.

Best among those pages, from my perspective, are the four authors listing of their CD of the year (they each list one) and four pages called Foreward to the 2010 Edition. In these four pages, the authors talk about what changed in the industry and, best, the more notable new recordings that emerged. This includes discussion of the rebound of recordings from Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet, DVDs on the work of Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein, the deaths of Vernon Handley and Richard Hickox, emerging superstar conductors Vasily Petrenko and Gianandrea Noseda, new recordings of special interest on keyboard, in chamber music and vocal music formats. This brief discussion is, for me, a big improvement over the 2008 book.

In recent years the Penguin Guide has been criticized for not having much new content. That criticism is fair again this year. However, there are only two books being published annually that do this and the Penguin Guide is far better as a guide for either the experienced collector or the neophyte that its main competitor for one simple reason: it has hundreds more listings in it than the Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2010.

Because the Gramophone book has almost 300 more pages than the Penguin Guide, this wouldn't seem possible. However, a not very exhaustive comparison of the two books -- which often review the same recordings and come to the same conclusions, sometimes in exactly the same words (see the review of Elgar Symphonies by Boult on the Lyrita label) -- will show anyone that there is far more content in the Penguin Guide than in Gramophone's book. Here is an alphabetical comparison of some composers and selected music I performed 10 minutes before writing this review. It lists the number of reviews in each book for a composer's popular music in both the CD and DVD formats:

Bach Brandenburg Concertos
Penguin Guide 11
Gramophone 10

Beethoven complete symphony sets
Penguin Guide 18
Gramophone 10

Haydn symphonies (both books include the complete sets of symphonies conducted by Antal Dorati and Adam Fischer)
Penguin Guide 56 including complete sets led by Mallon and the Hanover Band.
Gramophone 20

Mozart opera recordings
Penguin Guide 78
Gramophone 40

Rimsky Korsakov Scheherazade
Penguin Guide 14
Gramophone 3

Schubert lieder & song cycles
Penguin Guide 37
Gramophone 33

Verdi operas & highlights
Penguin Guide 151
Gramophone 79

Wagner Ring sets, operas & highlights
Penguin Guide 59
Gramophone 32

The Penguin Guide, with 9,400 listings, has nearly 4,000 more than the Gramophone book. And this isn't new for 2010; it has been the case for as long as the two books have competed for the classical music buyers dollar. Some supporters of the Gramphone book, whose reviews tend to be lengthier (they are copied from what appeared in Gramophone's monthly magazine say it is the relative quality of reviews in the two books that is their defining moments. I don't subscribe to that theory; I believe the book with more content wins the fight. It may, in boxing terms, be a 10 round decision based on points rather than a knockout, but it is nonetheless my decision and I stand by it.

Anyone that really cares about classical music, and buys a lot of recordings, should have both books. I'm not sure they need to update each book annually -- maybe updating them every 4-6 years is better -- but they should be in your reference library. Here are a couple others you should also have:

-- All Music Guide to Classical Music. This is more of a musicological book than compendium of reviews but it makes insightful and judicious recording recommendations and is full of important information.

-- Third Ear Classical Music Classical Music: Third Ear. Even though it was only published once in 2000 and is a decade out of date, the contents of this book are important to any classical music buyer. While wildly inconsistent from composer to composer, this is the only book of its type that made an effort to cover the entire recording industry.

-- The Rough Guide To Classical Music. This doesn't compete very well with any of these books but it is in the ballpark.

-- Jim Svejda, a disk jockey at a classical music station in California, published his book a time or two. It is far more personal than the others and serves as more of a one man guide (albeit out of print and out of date.)

-- Herbert Russcol's GUIDE TO LOW-PRICED CLASSICAL RECORDS from way back in 1968 is still relevant today even though its more than four decades old.

-- For those interested in recording history, Ewen's Musical Masterworks is a musicological book from the 1950s that defines composers and recommends recordings in the pre-stereo era.

For the rare collector that only wants one book about the industry on his or her shelves, the Pengin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2010 should be that book. It has the most listings to view, it comes in a more compact format than in 2008, and it runs rings around its only real competitor.

10. What about those comprehensive, money-saving "portrait" collection box sets (primarily from DG and EMI)? Well, they're not in this book because they take up too much space to list and review. The editors promise to cover them "much more comprehensively in our 2011 edition."

9. "We feel it is useful to draw readers' attention to some [recordings] that hold their places firmly in the pantheon of recorded performances," the editors state, which is apparently why younger performers such as Hilary Hahn and Isabelle Faust (whatever you or I may think of their merits) are largely ignored while the same small list of tried and true names are mentioned over and over again: Heifetz, Menuhin, Grumiaux, Klemperer, Barbirolli, Solomon...Was the last word on Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and Mahler committed to disc forty or fifty years ago?

8. Vocal recitals with music by more than a single composer are ignored (I get the impression that the editors find them just too much trouble to list and review), so goodbye to most opera aria and a great many lieder collections.

7. Why is it that performances on British labels (Hyperion, Chandos) tend to receive higher recommendations than CDs on labels from the rest of Europe, let alone Canada and the U.S.?

6. Why is it that Barenboim, Perlman, Ashkenazy, Karajan, and even Bernstein can do no wrong in these pages?

5. Sometimes the entries read as if they're not even really trying. The glowing "review" of the Zimerman/Rattle Brahms D minor concerto on DG seems to've been based on a blurb from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about a live concert given shortly before the recording date.

4. There's a lot of excellent music -- fresh, vibrant readings of the chamber and solo repertoire by major composers -- on such microlabels as Accent, Calliope, and Phoenix Edition, not that they're listed in the Penguin Guide.

3. Many of the classical music reviewers on Amazon and Musicweb are doing a much better job of evaluating new releases, so much so that the Penguin Guide is beginning to look like a chummy, largely irrelevant gentlemen's club given over to fond reminiscences of the pre-digital era -- back when there was GOOD music in the classical section of the record shops.

2. The price has gone up by 25%, but the book has 200 fewer pages than last year's edition?!

1. The Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2010 is better written, better laid out, easier to read, has useful sidebars comparing versions of many classical warhorses, and it's less expensive -- but the Penguin Guide continues to outsell it.

As other reviewers have stated, this 2010 edition is shorter and even less up-to-date than previous volumes. Penguin claim it is completely revised ! This claim can be easily disputed. Take for example the entry for Felix Weingartner. It is the same in the 2010 edition as it was in the 2009 edition, citing the first CPO release 'in this first issue of a projected Weingartner series'. In fact, volumes 2-6 were all released between 2005 and early 2009, making a complete mockery of the 'currentness' of this book.

I could list many, many more such examples, but it would be wasting both my time, and yours.

I'm going to use it as a door-stop, as it certainly is not the 'more comprehensive than ever before and now updated annually' reference book that Penguin claim. Save your money and browse through Amazon for buyer reviews. I have been buying this guide for more years than I care to think about. Unless 2011 is dramatically different, I will never buy it again.

I was able to have a look at it recently and found, as others here have, little new, despite the claim of its being 'completely revised', which wasn't explained or evidenced anywhere that I could find. Accordingly, I am posting here largely unchanged my review of last year's edition, which some found helpful:


First, I should mention that my area of interest is almost exclusively post-19th century music -- but my criticisms are general ones which apply to the entire book.

Above all we have the the oft-noted and indisputable British bias, which the authors should prominently and frankly acknowledge. Now I'm not an Anglophobe -- there are many fine British performers and performances, but it is also true that British performances (like those other cultural regions) tend to have a certain personality, which does not always best serve the music. At their worst, you get stodgy, genteel performances lacking necessary fire, drive, and rhythmic bite. Of course not all music requires the types of expression they tend to be less successful with (a lot of British music doesn't, not coincidentally), and it is also a matter of emphasis, of which musical elements are considered most important by the performer and the listener. But whether the bias here is a nationalistic or purely aesthetic one, it is important to recognize that this guide reflects a rather narrow viewpoint (written as it is by three British men of advanced age, who admit in the introduction that they rarely have substantial disagreements in their reviewing), which is not universal or 'authoritative'.

My concern is that someone would buy the most highly recommended performances in this guide and think that's the end of the story for those works. It's widely known (or should be) that different performances can greatly alter one's enjoyment and estimation of a work, so one must explore and form one's own judgments (make the time for it -- it's rewarding and as a bonus you will join the elite ranks of music snobs). I'm talking of course about differences in subjective quality, not objective quality, i.e. more in style, and less in technique (not a clear-cut distinction, I know, but a useful general one). Relatively few of your choices can be ruled out on technical grounds, so the ranking of performances is mostly subjective, and equally 'qualified' reviewers can have substantial differences in their response to a given performance (of course, it can still be interesting and informative to hear others' opinions).

To help determining for yourself which recordings to buy, it is possible now to listen to clips on the web to compare performances or at least get an idea of their character before you spend money. Besides amazon and other music retail sites, the allmusic(dot)com web site is very good for this (an excellent resource for classical and any other music; on an album's page click the 'tracks' tab to listen to clips of individual tracks). For someone who is serious about exploring classical music as opposed to just finding the 'best' performance of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or what-have-you, I think a guide to the repertoire is much more useful than recording reviews. By this I mean mostly lists of composers and their most significant/influential works, not so much the extramusical background and 'explaining' of works that for me adds little to the musical experience, as interesting as some of it is. Sites good for this are allmusic(dot)com again (at the upper right on the home page is a link to lists of 'top composers' -- click the 'works' tab on a composer's page and you can select 'highlights' of their oeuvre from the drop-down menu above the works list) and classical(dot)net (basic repertoire, also reviews here), and the book The Essential Canon of Classical Music is quite good, with some recording recommendations (generally good ones, in my opinion).

Back to the book in question though, another aspect that limits its usefulness is that it isn't really a comparative guide. It is more a compilation of positive individual cd reviews accumulated over the years. Thus the reader, faced with say several '4-star' discs including a given work, often has nothing to help make a choice other than the generalized praise each disc receives. To add to that difficulty, the organization, with the disc being the basic unit instead of the work, results in discussion of performances of a particular work being scattered. What about the possibility that a cd contains a great performance of an important work and a relatively poor one of another - do they give it a 2-star 'average' or 4 stars because of the one indispensable recording? That should be up to the reader and is an example of how not using the work as the basic unit of organization and rating is an inferior approach.

I think the main reason this is the most popular guide is because it's the biggest, with the 'authoritative' reputation and the appearance of comprehensiveness with its yearly 'updates', and because of the lack of strong competition. For alternatives, the best single-volume guide that I have seen, and the one I've used most, is Classical Music: Third Ear: The Essential Listening Companion, a comparative guide organized by work. This book has a list of some 50 contributors of various backgrounds (admittedly they appear to be mostly American), decreasing the likelihood that the writer is indifferent to the material. It was published in 2002 and has its own flaws, but it does a fine job of getting you started, which is all any guide of this type can really do anyway. There are also the review periodicals, American Record Guide and Fanfare, among others, the latter with an online archive.

I hope this review was of help to you, and if you are interested in recommendations on recordings or repertoire of works written after 1900, I would be happy to share mine.

As only a mid-level classical music fan, I have found this guide to be highly useful over the years as I have assembled a small library of recordings.

Not only have this guide's listing helped steer me toward better recordings, but also reading the listings has introduced me to the magic of all sorts of performers and conductors I was not previously aware of.

No doubt there are great recordings of things that are not listed in here, as the ongoing comparisons with the Gramophone Guide are happy to point out. That problem cuts both ways.

But if you are an average enthusiast of classical music like me, you can bet that any recording listed in here is going to be a worthy expenditure, and that means this book is money well spent.

Now if only they could make it into a web/iPhone app so a user could search for and easily find all recommended recordings by a certain performer, for example. And to have all that in my iPhone the next time I unexpectedly decide to start shopping...

The Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2010 While the new edition of the Gramophone Guide brings little change, it has now superseded the Penguin Guide.

I am so frustrated with the new Penguin Guide. Ivan and Kathleen March (father and daughter, I assume) have obviously adopted a laissez-faire attitude about the typographical errors that go back to 2008 or further. For example, there is a listing for Rathaus' Symphonies 2 and 3 (on CPO) that still includes Symphony No. 1 (not on this release). A letter to Penguin produced no changes. Don't any proofreaders work for this distinguished publisher? On top of that, some labels that have gone out of print, such as Jecklin, are still included.

But the oversights are most disturbing. A whole series of wonderful recordings of some of Blochs lesser known orchestral music on the label Capriccio have never been covered. Likewise the Joseph Jongen series on Cypres. But the editors miss releases on the major labels as well. There was never a review of the Weill Symphonies on Chandos or the Rubinstein 4th Piano Concerto on Hyperion, and the Honegger Cantate de Noel on the same label was overlooked. The Schreker works on Nimbus, which were included in the 2009 Gramophone Guide, were ignored. The Foerster Violin Concertos on Supraphone don't merit review (they are revelatory), nor do the symphonies issued on MDC. There are too many worthy new releases to mention.

I agree with the previous review that Penguin concentrates on British composers, no matter how obscure. Yet German, Austrian, Italian, and American composers often get short shrift.

Perhaps the Penguin authors expect us to wait for the yearbook, which has turned into a repository for issues not receiving three stars. The authors' smug superiority to these recordings is useless. There hasn't been a yearbook for some time.

The Penguin Guide has been instrumental in opening my eyes to composers I did not previously know such as Novak, Rautavaara, Karlowicz, and Foulds, and that's why I continue to hope that the format will change. The editors' mission should be exposing the public to new recordings or reissue; those classics that have been on the market for years should be covered in brief footnotes only.

When I began searching for music to buy, I found the Penguin Guide useful, but that was 10 years ago. It gave good recommendations on the classics, but had relatively nothing on new recordings. Now that trend is to the extreme. I think my edition from 2003 is quite similar to this edition: all the same recordings are in here and very few new outstanding recordings are reviewed. Don't worry, I didn't waist my money on this edition, rather I found a copy at a bookstore and looked through it. And good grief is it expensive. Let me list several reasons why not to buy this book:
1. It is super expensive for the redundant content.
2. The scoring system seems to be somewhat random and inconsistent.
3. Not enought new recordings are included.
4. They only seem interested in record labels out of England.
There are multiple other options that are far superior to this tree killer such as the Grammaphone guide, classicstoday.com, your local record store, and finally amazon reviews. Don't waist your money here. Avoid at all costs!

The younger generation may prefer the Web to a book, prefer downloading music to owning a CD.

I prefer CD's and prefer reading from a book than read reviews from the Web.

The history of the Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music goes back to 1960 albeit with a different name. The authors have been around for decades responsible for an unbelievably successful annual publication. This does not mean, however, that we should expect or regard these critics as God like, all seeing and all hearing, as current and as relevant as the internet. Serious critics have their favorites and their own point of view. We have to respect these human qualities. Critics are fallible which is why we should not let them ruin our appreciation of music.

Just as important as the star rating are the actual review. The review is the thinking behind the star rating whether it is one star or four. Every word has to be read and weighed. With experience one can read between the lines. Sir Colin Davis has probably never received a bad review, and if there seems to be a British bias I am surprised that von Karajan has received even higher praise than before.

Has the Penguin Guide enhanced or confused your enjoyment of music? No one except the individual can answer this question.

I alternate purchasing the Penguin and the Gramophone Classical Music Guide. The Penguin has a larger number of reviews while the Gramophone has longer and therefore more thoughtful reviews. I consult both with great pleasure.

I am still a fan of the Penguin (see my review of the 2009 edition), although many of the criticisms recounted here are valid to varying degree.

Even though it is flawed, there is no alternative which is flawless.

I've been a collector for 40-some years, so I have many recordings that are "historical" (if not legendary), therefore I am glad the Penguin still refers to some of them - I can use that as a baseline.

However, I also wish they had more up-to-date reviews, but consider this: I receive the BBC Music Magazine each month, and there are I-don't-know-how-many new releases in there each month. No printed reference can hope to keep up. For now, I combine the Penguin, BBC Magazine, and Amazon reviewers for the best survey of comparisons.

In my review of the 2009 edition, I alluded to the fact that the Penguin needs to evolve in the face of "selective pressures" (to use a biological analogy). In fact, to continue my analogy, I think the Penguin needs to evolve into something altogether different, and FLY!

It needs to be a searchable web resource, with Wiki-like features that allow approved reviewers (from among the Amazon top 500 perhaps?) to submit supplemental information, and ALL reviews going back to the 70s can be in there. It can become the Wikipedia of classical music CD/DVD reviews.

Is anyone from Penguin listening? I offer my services!

I am a huge fan of Gramophone Magazine Gramophone and have been a subscriber to that exemplary publication for more years than I can remember. I have a huge classical music CD collection and add to it regularly. Indeed, I use Gramophone MAGAZINE for decisions on many CDs that I buy. However, when I want to buy a particular piece of music on a CD I consult this Penguin Guide, as well as the Gramophone The Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2011 The Key Classical Recordings on CD, DVD and SACD]]and Rough Guides The Rough Guide to Classical Music (Rough Guide Music Reference)and I estimate that 95% of the time I find what I'm looking for in the Penguin Guide. While it may not be worth buying every single year, with the Penguin Guide your chances of finding little known gems of music, or coverage of composers works, that simply will not be found within the pages of the other two mentioned guides, are much greater. A simple comparison of the number of entries in the various guides is but one indication to support this. I think there's about 4 times as many entries in the Penguin as there are in the Gramophone. I'm not certain of that ratio but I'm too lazy to get up and check right now. LOL Furthermore, generally speaking, for a given piece of music the Penguin Guide will have insightful comments about several recordings that better help me make an informed buying decision.

I should also mention one other guide that's NOT worth considering. It's The Third Ear Classical Music: Third Ear: The Essential Listening Companion. This Guide also does not have the depth of Penguin's, or even this Gramophone Guide for that matter, and it hasn't been updated in over ten year so you won't get any recommendations of contemporary excellent recently recorded CDs of some of the young talent in the classical music world today (e.g., James Ehnes, Sarah Chang, Lang Lang, Joshua Bell, and the list goes on and on).

The Gramophone Guide is not bad though. For the recordings it does praise, I've found it to be a reliable source. Also, if you're just starting out building your collection it will guide you to the "must have" pieces in any classical music collection (e.g., Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites, Beethoven's fifth Symphony, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, Puccini's La Boheme, etc.) and excellent selections of those basics. Indeed, within the first few pages of the guide there's three or four pages of "Essential Pieces". However, you'll also find all those in the Penguin Guide and a lot more. If you're really serious about building a top notch classical music CD collection then, I am of the opinion that you should buy the Penguin Guide every two or three years and subscribe to Gramophone Magazine. Each monthly issue of Gramophone includes two pages of ten "Editor's Choice" recordings, one of which is a "CD of the Month" and there's also usually a DVD and an historical reissue recommendation. If there's a genre you're interested in within the Editor's Choices and you purchase it for your collection, you're likely to get a CD you'll be proud to own for the rest of your life. Additionally all of the Editor's Choice recordings are reviewed in depth and often compared to other highly regarded recordings of identical works so there's no shortage of ideas of what to buy.

Ted Libbey's NPR Guide The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection : The 350 Essential Works is "cute". It's been around a long time and it does get updated every few years but Gramophone and Penguin's recommendations are, in my humble opinion, far superior. I don't have the most recent issue but the one I do have severely lacks in the Opera genre and it's reviews of the "350 Essential Works and the specific CDs of those works pale in comparison to Gramophone and Penguin's reviewers' knowledge and insights into the nuances of the works being reviewed. Libbey's book is good if you want your hand held and be told what "essential works" to buy without formidable comparison and contrast but you won't get much of a music education from this publication.

One final note: I've noticed many reviewers of the Penguin and previous years' (at the time I wrote this review there were only three other reviews of this 2011 guide) Gramophone Guides to accuse them both of having a British Bias. Both guides are indeed written and edited by Brits but I've found this allegation to be without merit. I own probably 1,500 CDs, almost all of which were found within the pages of Gramophone Magazine and the Penguin Classical Music Guide. There is absolutely and unequivocally no British bias in my collection and I think my collection constitutes a statistically significant sample. Notwithstanding the foregoing fact, it would be nice to have another U.S. based entry in this market aside from the elementary NPR Guide and the Third Ear which is sorely dated and not of the same caliber even if it were current.